page_title: Rudolf Vrba
section_title: Majdanek
hierarchical_section_title: Rudolf Vrba / Majdanek and Auschwitz / Majdanek
caption_attribution_description: Polski: KL Majdanek. Mglisty październikowy poranek 2008.
context_page_description: Rudolf "Rudi" Vrba was a Slovak-Jewish biochemist who, as a teenager in 1942, was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland. He became known for having escaped from the camp in April 1944 together with Alfred Wetzler, at the height of the Holocaust, and for having co-written with him a detailed report about the mass murder that was taking place there. The report reached George Mantello in Switzerland almost two months after it arrived in Budapest. It was obtained from Moshe Krausz in Budapest by Romanian diplomat Florian Manilou who gave it to Mantello. Mantello immediately publicized a summary of the report, which led to large scale grass roots protests in Switzerland against the atrocities, to masses about the fate of Jews and about 400 headlines about the genocide. Mantello and the Swiss people are credited with having halted the mass deportation of Hungary's Jews to Auschwitz in July 1944, saving more than 200,000 lives. After the war Vrba trained as a biochemist, working mostly in England and Canada.
context_section_description: Vrba was deported from Czechoslovakia on 15 June 1942 to the Majdanek concentration camp in Lublin, German-occupied Poland, where he briefly encountered his older brother, Sammy. They saw each other "almost simultaneously and we raised our arms in brief salute"; it was the last time he ever saw him. He also encountered "kapos" for the first time: prisoners appointed as functionaries, one of whom he recognized from Trnava. Most wore green triangles, signalling their category as "career criminals":
  They were dressed like circus clowns ... One had a green uniform jackets with gold horizontal stripes, like something a lion tamer would wear; his trousers were the riding breeches of an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army and his headgear was a cross between a military cap and a priest's biretta. ... I realized that here was a new elite ... recruited to do the elementary dirty work with which the S.S. men did not wish to soil their hands.
  Vrba's head and body were shaved, and he was given a uniform, wooden shoes and a cap. Caps had to be removed whenever the SS came within three yards. Prisoners were beaten for talking or moving too slowly. At roll call each morning, prisoners who had died during the night were piled up behind the living. Vrba was given a job as a builder's labourer. When a kapo asked for 400 volunteers for farm work elsewhere, Vrba signed up, looking for a chance to escape. A Czech kapo who had befriended Vrba hit him when he heard about this; the kapo explained that the "farm work" was in Auschwitz.
caption: Majdanek concentration camp, 2008
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